Sunday, May 25, 2008

CANNES, France - Next Floor, an 11-minute Canadian film about gluttony, has won the grand prize for short movies at the Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Next Floor was filmed in an abandoned Montreal factory that was being demolished, and shows a group of diners eating piles of food - everything from rhinoceros to deer - before crashing through to the floor below.

Villeneuve (Maelstrom) shot the movie while taking a break from editing his new feature Polytechnique, about the 1989 Montreal massacre.

The Cannes award is given by the French TV network Canal+, which acquires the right to broadcast Next Floor. Villeneuve wins 6,000 Euros (about $9,000) to shoot his next project.